I recently beat the first boss and am having a good time so far. I find the dodge a bit clunky, but it seems like the game is trying to push you more towards blocking (and perfect blocking).
Overall, I love the fact that a demo for this game exists and that it feels quite polished!
Your second point is interesting! I agree there wasn’t much encouraging back-tracking, especially since there are pretty generous fast travel points. Because the design is quite good, in my opinion, hopefully they’ll do more to emphasize that aspect of the game later on.